California Senate bans warrantless drone surveillance

The California State Senate has approved a bill that will drastically restrict how law enforcement agencies from San Diego to San Francisco can use unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, for policing purposes.

On Tuesday, the Senate voted 25-8 in favor of the legislation, AB
1327, setting it on course to go before the State Assembly once
more for final approval of new amendments tacked on since
lawmakers in that chamber last saw the bill in late January and
passed it by a margin of 59-5.

Should the Senate give the bill another go-ahead, then the
legislation will next likely land on the desk of California
Governor Jerry Brown, a democrat, to be signed into law. Once
enacted, it will limit law enforcement agencies from conducting
drone surveillance by forcing police departments to obtain
warrants before putting UAVs in the air, except in certain
circumstances, like fires and hostage situations. Additionally,
any footage recorded by these aircraft would have to be destroyed
by the agencies that collect them within one year.

"The potential for abuse of drones is high and we need to be
vigilant to ensure our Constitutional rights are protected,"
the bill's co-author, Democratic Senator Ted Lieu, told Reuters.

“I think it’s very important that we have the external
oversight that a warrant provides,” Chris Conley of the
American Civil Liberties Union’s Northern California office told
Capital Public Radio ahead of this week’s
vote. “It would help make sure that drones are used
appropriately to help keep the community safe, and not in ways
that could invade individual rights.”

Despite the overwhelming support for the amendment from both the
state’s Assembly and Senate, however, the bill has not brought on
board the endorsement of everyone, including police groups that
oppose restrictions on their ability to conduct surveillance
missions at the drop of a hat.

The legislation "is an inappropriate attempt to impose search
and seizure requirements on California law enforcement agencies
beyond what is required by the 4th Amendment of the United States
Constitution," the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office
said to Reuters in their opposition to the bill.

“We don’t think you should have to go through a court process
in order to deploy one of these things when it’s the same
technology that’s on someone’s cellphone,” Aaron Maguire of
the California State Sheriffs’ Association added to CAP for a
report published earlier this month.

And while dozens of law enforcement agencies across the US have
expressed interest in using drones, the Los Angeles Police
Department has been one of only a few, until now, with the means
to do as much: in May, RT reported that the LAPD two Draganflyer X6
aircraft from the Seattle Police Department, which obtained the
drones with federal grants but then ditched them about an array
of concerns were raised by area privacy advocates.

“If we do deploy these, not sure we ever will, it’ll be based
on a strict set of written guidelines approved by the police
commission,” LAPD Cmdr. Andy Smith told the Los Angeles Times earlier this month with
regards to the drones. “Absent approval from the police
commission and public acceptance, we’re not going to use them.
Chief Beck said if it compromises public trust, we won’t use
them.”

Nevertheless, the mere ownership alone of the aircraft has been
enough to attract oppositions from privacy-minded Los Angelinos,
who have formed a group called the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition,
according to the Times, to rally against the use of police
drones.

“As a community, we’re not here to be experimented on,”
Jamie Garcia, a Boyle Heights nurse and member of the coalition,
told the Times earlier this month.

“We don't need a discussion about their value, we don't need
to come up with laws on how to use them—we just don't need them,
period,” Eden Jequinto, a law student at UCLA and anti-drone
activist, told Vice’s Charles Davis last week.

Meanwhile, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti said in June that the LAPD
would keep drones grounded until a policy is in place that’s
adopted after sufficient input from the community.

“I don’t want these things up in the air until we know for
sure they’re not going to be used against innocent folks,”
Garcetti said according to a local CBS station.

In September 2012, an Associated Press poll found that more than one-third of
Americans fear their privacy will suffer if drone surveillance
becomes a mainstream tool of domestic law enforcement. The
Federal Aviation Administration has so far approved the use of
drones for non-commercial purposes across the US with some
restrictions while the FAA wrestles with adopting formal rules.
By the end of the decade, the agency expects as many at 30,000
UAVs will use US airspace.